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10 Dec 2016 2:48:40am

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This is an amateur analysis that mostly demonstrates that you understand neither rationality nor the 'new atheists'. Frankly, it's terrifying that somebody who is apparently well-educated in our modern society can be so dismissive of the single greatest trick humanity has ever devised - science. Reason and science 'merely skim the surface of reality'? In 400 years of science human life expectancy has doubled, our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality has advanced by incredible leaps and bounds (400 years ago we didn't even have Newtonian physics), and the quality of life of the average person has jumped incredibly.

And this is all merely 'the surface of reality'? What else /is/ there?

Your attack on reason as somehow 'circular' or 'based on nothing' is true, to a point (although it makes you a <a href=http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2009#comic>premature nihilator</a>), but so is every system of thought conceivable. You've got to start from some axioms.

And as far as axioms go, "There is a real universe, which behaves in consistent, objectively-verifiable ways" and "Logic works" are not bad axioms. They're simple, low-level, and given how well science and reason has worked over the course of human history, effective.

Faith does not 'transcend' reason, doesn't reveal any hidden insights. It's just belief in something without a rational basis for that belief. By definition (and yes, I have read your earlier piece on "Why Faith Is Not Blind", which similarly didn't get it). Going "Oh yes, all that reason stuff is great, but hey I also think there is a great purple arkleseizure that sneezed out the universe!" doesn't liberate anyone. Instead it leaves you in the quaqmire of subjectivity where every point of view is equally true. To accept faith as a useful means of knowing the universe is to implicitly deny the axiom that there is an objective reality. And frankly, that's pretty close to the definition of insanity.

Atheism, rationality, and materialism offers a self-contained, probably-consistent logical worldview. Faith, on the other hand, offers a known-inconsistent worldview in which every statement is true.